


From here to eternity

by MyFandomCausesHanaji



Series: Soulmates AUs oneshots [6]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Bittersweet, Canon Universe, Canonical Character Death, Destroy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, It was years and I still have FEELS, Romance, Romantic Soulmates, Silly, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmate-Identifying Timers, Soulmates, Spoilers, cuz we did saw he inhale so, takes place through all 3 games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-16 22:50:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14175066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyFandomCausesHanaji/pseuds/MyFandomCausesHanaji
Summary: ...she didn’t even have strength to feel anything about this discovery and simply shrugged, silently agreeing with the doctor, that this might be someone from the Normandy, and one of the newest additions to the crew, that is. This didn’t really present that much of choice, and she would’ve entertained the thought of how ridiculous that would be if it was Wrex and all the comments the old krogan would make at this, and when was the last time Tali even saw her own skin, and what a scandal it would be if it was Garrus ― a turian and a human, just think about it!````````````````````````Soulmates AU prompt:Counter that depicts how many times you pass your soulmate





	From here to eternity

**Author's Note:**

> This ship is so ancient, why am I even doing this, will anyone even read this?.. 
> 
> But I decided to replay ME in n-th time today, and all the memories and feelings have awoken again, and I'm just _**so**_ sentimental when it comes to this game and to these characters and to this ship, and I love them to pieces, so I just couldn't resist.  
>  I am usually more M/M type, but fem!Shepard is just remarkable, so it has always been fem!Shep for me. And I'm happy to be writing smth for this fandom, though it's probably half-dead now, lol.
> 
> Proofread: Himeneka

When humans first encountered alien races along with Mass Relays and other technologies that allowed them to be a rightful ― almost ― part of the Citadel races, there was one more thing that they discovered not without surprise ― they were not the only race, that held beliefs in soulmates and was blessed ― cursed? ― with a tool to find said soulmates. 

It was a counter on a left wrist ― for those races that had wrists, that is. Dark grey numbers resembling a tattoo, that showed the number of times a person passed their soulmate. This could be inconvenient for those soulmates, who happily lived together, as one could only imagine the number of times people walk past each other in the same appartement just during one day, especially considering Asari’s life span, but, thankfully, the Universe apparently preferred reason above a bad joke, and the counters would stop for those soulmates who found out about each other.

If the presence of the aforementioned counters certainly did its job in making humans perhaps a bit more warmly accepted among other races, it sure held its own problems in addition to those already known to humans, as it turned out that  soulmates must not necessarily be of the same species, which somewhat explained the rather high number of humans throughout the history who had never encountered their soulmates, and presented all lots of troubles now for those who were not able, due to different circumstances, to leave Earth to perhaps increase their chance of meeting their soulmate, where the word  _ ‘increase’  _ by itself now seemed ironic considering the amount of intelligent creatures scattered around the galaxy. 

In the first years after humans became a part of that galaxy, they went through all the stages towards the acceptance of the fact that now the possibility of meeting one’s soulmate was mathematically proved to be dangerously close to zero, which made the registered amount of diagnosed depressions skyrocket, but since virtually nothing could be done to change it somehow except for adjusting their soulmates belief system to the new conditions, humans finally settled down and kept creating families the same way as they did before ― just by creating them without throwing an extra glance on the little gray zeros on their wrists.

And as if this was not enough, there was another factor, that made the search of one's soulmate even more difficult. Which was that the counter, aside from changing the number, gave no other indications at the moment when you pass your soulmate for the first time. There were no angels’ chorus,  no figurative winged insects in your stomach, no feeling of a lighting strike, colors getting brighter, and no other romantic bullshit they like putting in those cheap novels so much. In fact, the traitorous counter didn’t even sting. It just went from zero to one as quiet and stealthy as a ninja from feudal Japan on his way to striking his next target. So unless you spent your days nose buried in your wrist waiting for the counter to change, there was basically no way to find out that your destined person just walked past you.

The amount of people with their counter stuck on  _ one  _ for years was not as big as those with zeroes, but was getting very close to it.

It was rather depressing, really.

Surely, the Universe did have a dark sense of humor after all.

With all that in mind it was hardly surprising that those who did manage, against all odds, to find their soulmates, were always a big news on the Extranet, honored guests on different shows, and several movies and novels were even based on the stories of these lucky folks.

So when Commander Jane Shepard walked in the shower on the Normandy after a too long day on the Citadel, that felt like two and might as well be such, and that included several fights, both verbal and ones with guns, and acquiring not one but three brand new members for the crew of the ship, that had never seen so many aliens aboard, she didn’t even think to check her left wrist, because, truly, she had more important things to be worried about, like, for example, the possible extinction of all organic life by the hands ― did they even have hands? ― of some species that should’ve been dead all 50,000 years ago.

But her eyes wandered when she reached for the shower handle, and that’s how simply by an accident, she discovered that since the last time she saw it, which probably was a few days ago ― she had been kind of busy seeing scenes of destruction in her dreams after her rendezvous with a Prothean beacon, excuse her ― the counter went from the familiar zero to a two-digits number. She spared it whole few seconds of a musing look, thought back to the approximate amount of people she first walked past just this one day on the Citadel, and then probably walked past again and again in her running errands around the station, humed, sighed, and returned back to her showering and the thoughts of Saren and Reapers that were way more intrusive and definitely more critical than contemplating about whether or not the first human Spectre just probably missed her chance of meeting her soulmate.

She forgot about it for days, too many to admit, that during that time she didn’t even have a spare second to throw a glance at her own wrist, which was now covered with the sleeve she stopped rolling up her arm as she had used to, and if that caused questions among the crew that knew her habits way too well, it was better than distracting everyone on board with the news that their beloved commander had met and probably missed her destined person. 

So the next time it was doctor Chakwas who, when treating her minor wounds after the mission on Virmire ― and she wished the wounds on her heart after she had left one of her people to die could be treated as easily ― pointed her attention to the number that now had reached four digits. This time she didn’t even have the strength to feel anything about this discovery and simply shrugged, silently agreeing with the doctor, that this might be someone from the Normandy, and one of the newest additions to the crew, that is. This didn’t really present that much choice, and she would’ve entertained the thought of how ridiculous that would be if it was Wrex and all the comments the old krogan would make at this, and when was the last time Tali even saw her own skin, and what a scandal it would be if it was Garrus ― a turian and a human, just think about it! 

But Saren was still a threat, and Kaiden died just a couple of hours ago, and she basically bore the fate of all races on her shoulders, and it just wasn’t the time.

The next time she dared to look at the counter was after the geth attack on the Citadel had been dealt with and all alien crew members left the Normandy and went on their own marry ways. There were five digits on her wrist, when the Normandy left the Citadel port, and there were the same five digits when she looked at them again days later just to make sure, and she wanted to think about it, because it seemed that she finally had time for that, since the mission the Council sent her to looked like nothing but a fool’s errand, but an unknown ship attacked the Normandy, and before she knew it, she was falling down on some planet, air ripping through the tear in her armor, and before she died, she had time to think that it was a good thing that her soulmate didn’t know, because this way she wouldn’t be missed. 

 

It was almost natural to check the counter when she was putting on an armor after waking up in a Cerberus lab. It was still on her wrist, but frozen on a zero, and first she thought  _ ‘That’s because I died’ _ , and then, after learning about Lazarus project —  _ ‘That’s because I am just a copy’. _

And she believed that for some time, despite all that Miranda was telling her, because there was no way to check that it wasn’t just a lifeless tattoo that was placed on her skin just to make it look real, just to convince her that she was still a human. And Miranda was a Cerberus, and all her new crew was a Cerberus, and even she now was a Cerberus too in a way, and the glow of the machinery inside her body spilled through the thin scars on her cheek and from the depths of her eyes, and the single gray oval on her wrist served as more of the evidence that she had died once, than anything else.

It was a relief and a breath of fresh air in more than one way, when she found out that the mercenary called Archangel she was sent to recruit on Omega was her old friend. He was worn out and tired, and probably a little bit dead inside, but they both joked about their new facial scars, and he was looking at her with his mandibles opening and closing up in what she had learnt to recognise as a sign of nervousness, and was telling her with conviction so deep and strong, that she almost felt herself convinced, that she was real, that she was her, and not some soulless copy, constructed from the remains of Shepard’s genetic material. 

He left, and she rolled up her sleeve, because if before she almost didn’t care, too wrapped up in her mission of saving the world, being dead for two years and brought back to life inevitably changed something inside her, and right now while the mission wasn’t any less important, the little counter on her wrist that now showed two digits, was more of an evidence of her being real than any words Miranda had been saying. 

They didn’t talk about it, but she hoped, that if he ever got out of that armor of his, he knew, and she was checking her counter after every time she passed the main battery, feeling more alive with the number on her wrist growing.

They bantered as usual, and talked about Garrus’ dead teammates, and about the people from the old Normandy, those who survived and those who died on that planet with her, and avoided to talk about the suicide mission they were heading to, and she once just walked to him, rose on her tiptoes, put her hand on his scarred mandible and silently brought their foreheads together in that gesture, that as Extranet told her, was a representation of a kiss for turians, but held much more cultural and social value, than humans’ simple mashing of lips. And the mandible under her palm fluttered in surprise, but Garrus didn’t draw back, and when later in her cabin she checked her counter, it showed the number it would be showing after that no matter how many times Garrus would walk past her splaying his mandibles in a smile.

 

They found her, barely alive, broken and damaged, but breathing, and when after long days and days of almost picking her up by pieces doctors finally said, that she would survive and she would wake up, and let visitors in her room, the counter on Garrus’ wrist picked up again, counting the times he walked past her bed back and forth in a nervous worried treading, because before against all odds her heart started beating again, it had stopped and for a fleeting moment she had died again. He didn’t know what happened to her own counter on the left wrist that during the slow and maddening fall of Citadel down on Earth got separated from her body and lost and probably destroyed in the rubble, but it hardly mattered. 

His counter stopped again when she opened her eyes many days later and smiled at him, and he leaned down to carefully press his mouth plates to her lips in that strange gesture humans called  _ a kiss,  _ that he had grown to cherish the same way as the press of their foreheads together, that for turians was a declaration of love and devotion so deep that no words could possibly express that.

* * *

 

They say the odds of meeting your soulmate in this huge universe full of different species is so close to zero, it will take several lines of said zeros after a comma and just a single  _ ‘1’ _ in the end to write it down, so nobody does. And no one will ever believe that it is possible to be united with your soulmate not once but three times. But the same way it is hardly believable that one can die and be brought back to life again, or that one person can almost singlehandedly stop the ancient powerful race from destroying all life, and even survive in the process. 

But Shepard is known to be stubborn, and to play by her own rules, and her union with her turian companion easily falls into this category in the eyes of the bystanders. No one but very few close friends know the story of their stopping, resetting and getting back to life counters.

A shame, that would make such a good plot for a novel or a movie. 

A turian and a human. The humans’ hero, more like. Just imagine...

**Author's Note:**

> I love them so much, guys, I can't express. I have a fucking tattoo with them, that's crazy... 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this.   
> Please, drop me a line in the comments to let me know what you think, it will make my day! ^_^
> 
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